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It is a type of flare known as ghosting. The two brightest lights in the lower left quadrant are causing reflections inside your camera/lens and showing up as flipped/reversed in the upper right quadrant.
See also: this answer to is it normal to get significant lens flare with a 50mm f/1.8 Canon prime lens?
Are these ghost light spots and vertical grain ...

To be honest, the advantages of using a polarizing filter at night are limited. The vast majority of people who purchase a polarizing filter are using it to darken the sky for landscape photographs. Others may also use it to remove reflections in glass or water (or general glare from photographs).
It will only decrease the "wet look" or have no impact at ...

If done right, these kind shots can look amazing. One technique is to have your subject stay perfectly still for the 25 - 35 seconds you need for the exposure. Some photographers do this really well; Paul Zizka comes to mind. The other common technique is taking several exposures and masking in Photoshop. Depends on how skilled you are with masking, this ...

You can either use a flash to expose the subject (you won't be able to see them walking into or out of the frame), or you can, as you suggest, take two shots and blend them in Photoshop - a matter of a few minutes work.
Making an exposure blended shot would require the subject to stand preternaturally still between shots for a decent effect.

I really don't think there is any practical way to make a flash less annoying outside of not using it. It is the nature of the beast. Even with light modifiers, its still a ridiculously bright object that can annoy or bother some people.
I think it is more important to simply understand that at an event such as a wedding where a respectful and religious ...

Some tools I would recomend.
1) A lightweight tripod. You also can buy a monopod. There are monopods with a "small tripod" on the base.
2) A luminus lens. On Canon you have the 50mm 1.8 lens verey cheap, excelent optics... but it is slow as hell on focusing. That is why some people use continus light to aid focusing, becouse you have a verey narrow DOF. ...

Reciprocity errors and their recommended corrections are usually described in film data sheets like this one for Portra, but unfortunately, for Portra in particular the information is not helpful (no correction up to 1 second, otherwise, test it on your own).
Sharp results - you obviously need a tripod. If you shoot stars or moon, there are formulas how to ...

All you can do is experiment, really. Nighttime photography has its own peculiar set of problems, especially where film is concerned, and you really can't rely on anything that looks like an easy recipe.
Reciprocity failure is a thing, and it's variable with conditions (temperature, mostly) and film age as well as with extended exposure time. I don't know ...